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UCLA UCLA Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Excavating Chinese America in the Delta: Race and the historical archaeology of the Isleton Chinese American community Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/2p1738vt Author Fong, Kelly Nicole Publication Date 2013 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Los Angeles Excavating Chinese America in the Delta: Race and the historical archaeology of the Isleton Chinese American community A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree Doctor of Philosophy in Archaeology by Kelly Nicole Fong 2013 ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION Excavating Chinese America in the Delta: Race and the historical archaeology of the Isleton Chinese American community by Kelly Nicole Fong Doctor of Philosophy in Archaeology University of California, Los Angeles, 2013 Professor Jeanne Arnold, Chair This dissertation is a historical archaeological study of the Chinese American community in Isleton, California during the first half of the 20th century. I utilize excavated material culture from the Bing Kong Tong site, documentary research, and oral histories to investigate everyday life in this community. In my analysis, I employ an interdisciplinary perspective that draws from Asian American Studies and historical archaeology to interpret materials in light of Asian American Studies history and racial theory to achieve two goals. First, I use racial theory to argue that historical archaeological analyses of Chinese American sites that rely on assimilation- based models are problematic because of how Asian Americans have been racialized as foreigners. By relying on assimilation in interpretation, I argue that this reifies existing stereotypes and is too simplistic for understanding these communities. Second, I offer this ii interdisciplinary perspective as a way to move beyond assimilation-based analyses by centering race, racism, and racialization in our studies to understand everyday life under conditions of structural racism. I use this interdisciplinary approach to investigate everyday life for the Chinese American community Isleton. I contend that structural racism impacted everyday life for this community and affected the material culture people used on an everyday basis. Consequently, I argue that artifacts should be interpreted in terms of agency and decisions made under conditions of structural racism rather than assimilation. By adopting a multi-disciplinary approach, we can learn much more about the Chinese American community and an emerging Chinese American subjectivity than we could with any one perspective alone. Artifacts from archaeological fieldwork illuminate how the Chinese American community found ways to survive, resist, and thrive during exclusion. iii The dissertation of Kelly Nicole Fong is approved. Laurie Wilkie Lane Hirabayashi Tom Wake Kathryn McDonnell Jeanne Arnold, Committee Chair University of California, Los Angeles 2013 iv For my ancestors v Table of Contents List of Figures ………………………………………………………………………………vii List of Tables ………………………………………………………………………………viii Acknowledgements ………………………………………………………………………….ix Vita ………………………………………………………………………………………….xii Chapter 1: Introduction: The Delta is in the Heart ……………………………………………1 Chapter 2: Racial theory and the historical archaeology of Chinese Americans ……………17 Chapter 3: Sociohistorical context of the Isleton Chinese American community …………..44 Chapter 4: Excavating the Isleton Chinese American community ………………………….79 Chapter 5: Material culture and everyday life under structural racism …………………….124 Chapter 6: Future directions for interdisciplinary Chinese American historical archaeologies ………………………………………………...…………..……..157 Works Cited ………………………………………………………………………………...166 vi List of Figures Figure 1. Map of the Sacramento-San Joaquin River Delta …………………..…..…………...5 Figure 2. Map of home districts of most pre-1965 Chinese immigrants ………....…………..46 Figure 3. Tong site excavation map from fieldwork between 2009 and 2011 ...….……..…...81 Figure 4. Tong site map with features ……………………………………………………....105 Figure 5. Feature 1 stratigraphy profile ……………………………………………………..106 Figure 6. Feature 2 stratigraphy profile ……………………………………………………..116 Figure 7. Feature 3 stratigraphy profile ……………………………………………………..119 vii List of Tables Table 1. Population by Race and Nativity, 1890-1950 …………………………………........71 Table 2. Isleton Population by Race, 1920-1940 …………………………………………….71 Table 3. Artifact Totals by Material …………………………………………...………..…...90 Table 4. Ceramic Sherd Count by Type …...…………….……………………………...…....91 Table 5. Porcelain Tablewares by Decorative Type ..............………………………………..93 Table 6. Glass by Type ...…..………………………………………………………………..101 Table 7. Metal by Type ……………………………………………………………….……..101 Table 8. Feature 1, Layer 1 Artifacts ………………………………………………………..108 Table 9. Feature 1, Layer 2 Artifacts ………………………………………………………..109 Table 10. Feature 2, Layer 2 Artifacts ………………………………………………………116 Table 11. Feature 2, Layer 1 Artifacts ………………………………………………………117 Table 12. Feature 3, Layer 1 Artifacts ………………………………………………………121 Table 13. Feature 3, Layer 2 Artifacts ………………………………………………………122 viii Acknowledgements This dissertation would not have been possible without support from many different people and organizations. Several fellowships and funding sources supported this project and my graduate school education: the Eugene Cota Robles Fellowship; the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship; the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship; and the UCLA Dissertation Year Fellowship. The Cotsen Institute of Archeology graciously provided a travel grant to present my research in a co-organized panel at the 2013 Society for American Archaeology conference in Honolulu, HI. My archaeological fieldwork would not have been imaginable without help from many people. I am indebted to the Isleton Brannan-Andrus Historical Society (IBAHS) for generously allowing me to dig at the Bing Kong Tong site at 29 Main Street. I especially would like to thank Charlene Andersson and Sharon Fong for their time and support throughout this project, including fielding questions and allowing me to borrow canopies during excavation to prevent my crew and I from melting in the Delta heat. I would also like to thank Jean Yokotobi for allowing me to excavate at 27 Main Street before installing the memorial garden for Bessie Chinn and allowing me to store equipment in her garage nightly during excavation. I am very grateful for Jean’s continued support and encouragement throughout this research. I am greatly indebted to my volunteers who helped with excavation between 2008 and 2011: Clem Lai, Zoe Lai, Javier Alvarado, Jeff Fong, Karen Fong, Dar Fong, Debbie Fong, and Bob Dister. I also must thank Sonny McIntyre for checking in on our progress daily and helping us prepare the excavation area, especially when this meant moving a large pile of lumber in 2011. Outside of the field, I had assistance with labwork from students in the historical archaeology lab at UC ix Berkeley and colleagues who were kind enough to help with artifact identification. Additionally, Yim Fong Lai and James Lai were outstanding with translating Chinese characters that I could not figure out on my own. I am also grateful to Saadi Shapiro, who allowed me to use his expertise in ceramics and ceramic making in my analysis of fire-altered ceramics. Tom Wake and volunteers in the UCLA Zooarchaeology lab were kind enough to working on my faunal assemblage. I must acknowledge my oral history interviewees as well as people who were instrumental in helping me track down these interviewees. Thank you to my interviewees Nikolas Catanio, Edwin Chew, Margaret Chew, Roger Chinn, Mary Moy, and Molly Leung for opening your homes and memories to me. These stories make my study more realistic and personable. Thank you to Lucky Owyang, Jean Yokotobi, Grant Din, Tyler Pon, and Eric Leong for introducing me to these wonderful oral history interviewees. I am also grateful to the organizers and attendees of the Isleton Chinese reunion in June 2012 and the Owyang Family Reunion in October 2012 for letting me share my research with them and for sharing pictures and anecdotes with me. While this dissertation focuses on the narratives of my six oral history candidates, these anecdotes helped me understand everyday life in Isleton. I also had the opportunity to present my research several times to get feedback, identify more oral history candidates, and polish my work. The Chinese Historical Society of Southern California invited me to give a talk in at their monthly meeting in April 2012. This opportunity provided a chance to share my work with community members with a mutual passion in history. Laurie Wilkie and Kim Christensen-Schwarz also invited me to guest lecture in their American Material Culture class at UC Berkeley where I had the chance to share my research with students. x I would like to thank my committee for their invaluable feedback, advice, and support through this project: my committee chair Jeanne Arnold, and my committee members Laurie Wilkie, Lane Hirabayashi, Tom Wake, and Kathryn McDonnell. Lane provided invaluable feedback and support from the heart of an anthropologist and the spirit of an Ethnic Studies scholar and historian. Jeanne and Laurie were particularly helpful with offering advice when I got stuck in my writing and research, for which I am most grateful. This dissertation